


Like a Good Azgeda Spy

by PenguinofProse



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Character Study, Echo appreciation squad, Episode AU: 7.05, F/F, Fix-It, Pro-Echo propaganda campaign
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-18
Updated: 2020-06-18
Packaged: 2021-03-03 23:46:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,202
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24794113
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PenguinofProse/pseuds/PenguinofProse
Summary: Fix-it fic for Echo's character regression in 7.05. Featuring less screaming and more Echope.
Relationships: Echo/Hope Diyoza
Comments: 12
Kudos: 59





	Like a Good Azgeda Spy

**Author's Note:**

> This is not an apology for or attempt to justify Echo's actions in 7.05. It's a fix-it, because I firmly believe that the way she lost her cool and killed without reason (and started screaming?!) is not consistent with the controlled and strategic (and occasionally even moral) character she's been portrayed as in recent seasons. If you want someone to rant with about this, come find me on Twitter - because I'm genuinely furious that the writers have ruined a character I love with one stereotyped, inconsistent scene.
> 
> I know this won't be everyone's favourite story ever, so if it's not your thing, please don't read it and then moan about it - there's loads of other great fics out there you would prefer!
> 
> Happy reading!

**a/n This is not an apology for or attempt to justify Echo's actions in 7.05. It's a fix-it, because I firmly believe that the way she lost her cool and killed without reason (and started screaming?!) is not consistent with the controlled and strategic (and occasionally even moral) character she's been portrayed as in recent seasons. If you want someone to rant with about this, come find me on Twitter - because I'm genuinely furious that the writers have ruined a character I love with one stereotyped, inconsistent scene.**

**I know this won't be everyone's favourite story ever, so if it's not your thing, please don't read it and then moan about it - there's loads of other great fics out there you would prefer!**

**Happy reading!**

Echo has always been proud of exactly two things – her loyalty and her self-control.

It's not like she has much else to be proud of, looking back on a life where she walked out on her grieving mother, stabbed her only friend, and has been running from her conscience ever since. She knows what she's done, and she's not proud of it, but she keeps a calm face on it because – well, because that's what she does.

Loyalty can be a tricky one, at times. When she was Azgeda, it was loyalty to her people that kept her ticking. And maybe a little bit of personal loyalty to Roan, towards the end, she has to admit. But since she went to space and found a new family, her loyalty begins and ends with Bellamy.

She knows loyalty isn't love. She's not an idiot – she knows the difference. Often during those years she found herself wondering whether she was actually capable of feeling love, after everything she's done.

She knows better, now. She knows she is more than capable of feeling love.

She knows, because she met Hope.

That doesn't make a difference to her loyalty, though. She loves Hope – more than she ever thought she could love anyone – but she loves her _quietly_. Because she has to stay loyal to Bellamy, who gave her a chance like no one else ever had, who taught her that she didn't have to be a cold-hearted spy for the rest of her life.

If she's being honest, she's scared of what might happen to her if she loses Bellamy. That's partly what drives her obsessive need to find him. She's scared that she'll start using her loyalty wrong once more if she loses him, and that her self-control will yet again become a frozen mask that she puts on to pretend that murder doesn't hurt her. And she's scared that without him she would have no place in the new family she values so much, that Raven and Emori wouldn't laugh with her like they used to.

She's scared, in short, that without Bellamy she would revert to being a good Azgeda spy.

So it is that she loves Hope as subtly as possible, and keeps fighting to get Bellamy back.

It goes well, for the first five years. They befriend Orlando and learn all they can from him, and prepare as best as they can for the ultimate rescue mission.

Then it all unravels, over the course of five short minutes.

She has to kill the troops and leave Orlando tied up. That's what Gabriel doesn't seem to understand. It's the smart move, the only tactic that makes sense if they are to get to Bellamy in one piece. And she has to be the one to do it, because if there is death to dish out and guilt to bear – well, then. It ought to be her who takes one for the team. She's the killer, out of the three of them.

Hope gets it. Echo can see it in her eyes. She can see that Hope doesn't _like_ it, but that she understands why Echo is doing it. That sometimes being ruthless is the safest choice, and Echo is built for ruthlessness.

Gabriel protests, too, when they have passed through the Bridge and come out on the other side, and Hope and Echo make a start on dispatching the guards. Even as she's stashing the bodies safely out of the way, she wonders about Gabriel's objections. She muses, for a moment, on the fact that Bellamy probably wouldn't like this. He seems to have become a bit obsessed with doing better, since they left Earth. Or since he patched things up with Clarke, perhaps she should say – or maybe even since he left Clarke when the world burned. But it doesn't matter if Bellamy doesn't like it, she decides. He doesn't need to like it. He just needs to live.

But if he doesn't like it, then he won't like _her_. And if he leaves her, then what happens to the life she has built in his shadow?

Hope interrupts her anxious thoughts, grabbing at her elbow.

"Echo? Time to go."

Maybe, she wonders, if the life she has built in Bellamy's shadow dies away – maybe she could build a life in the sun of Skyring with Hope? It seems inevitable, at this point, that Bellamy will gravitate back towards Clarke sooner or later, so perhaps Echo ought to be prepared to steel her courage and move on.

That takes a very different kind of courage from stabbing a few well-trained guards.

Of course, they are barely around the next corner when the plan deteriorates even further. They find themselves in the midst of a crowd of religious fanatics, so obsessively devoted to their cause that they do not even notice three strangers in their midst.

They've listened to a good couple of minutes of some disturbing speech when Echo notices something that has her heart racing. There are only two of them still here. Hope has slipped off, is some metres in front of her, on some unsanctioned mission of her own.

No.

No, that can't be allowed. If anyone is going to have the weight of another murder on their conscience, it will be Echo. She knows from personal experience that making mistakes is easier than living with them. She won't have Hope corrupted like that. Hope is _good_ , and Echo needs it to stay that way. She needs to protect her at all costs.

That's what loyalty is.

She sneaks forward, grabs at Hope's hand. She stills her as subtly as she can, and whispers beneath the murmuring of the crowd.

"Hope. No, you can't."

"Let me go!"

"No. You want to get your mother back, don't you? You have to keep calm and follow the plan." Self-control is a warrior's greatest weapon, after all.

"Like you did?" Hope asks, tone cynical, and that hurts. It hurts because Echo is not used to Hope looking at her like she's a monster.

She might have to get used to it, based on the way today is going.

"Yes. Like I did. The plan changed, but what I did made sense. You know it did."

Hope still doesn't like it. She's still frowning, still not the sunshine girl with the core of steel Echo has found herself falling in love with. But she does nod, stiff, and stand down.

They don't manage to leave until the others in the crowd part to go their separate ways. By then Hope is fidgeting madly, and even Gabriel is starting to look twitchy, but Echo has known longer stand-offs than this. A little forced stillness in the midst of a mission is frustrating, but it's no reason to lose her mind.

Losing her mind is not what she does. Loyalty and self-control – that's her.

As soon as they can move, they do. Racing down corridors as slowly as they can bear to, balancing the need for speed with a desire to avoid suspicion.

They find Octavia first. She's chanting something to herself, over and over and over again like a prayer.

Echo wonders if they have done something to her head. She might not be friends with Octavia – not by a long shot – but she knows her well enough to expect her to be brave and active, and so she is concerned by the vacant look in her eyes, now. Hope takes charge of Octavia, freeing her while Echo subdues the shocked man dressed in white who was presumably here to guard her or treat her – or, by the looks of things, send her out of her wits.

It's almost too easy. The stranger is no match for a well-trained warrior, for all Orlando's comments about his well-trained peers. Hope gets Octavia awake and staggering to her feet. Gabriel stands by, visibly uncomfortable and flinching every time Echo unsheathes her knife.

That's when she sees it. That's when she sees the last memory of Octavia's, playing out in midair.

That's when she sees Bellamy die.

She loses it. There's no other word for it. That self-control she's clung to with such pride for all these years? It scatters like snow in the wind, as she punches the stranger in the face and lets loose in a primal scream.

She's furious. Furious with these strangers for killing him, furious with Bellamy for getting himself into this situation – no doubt he was trying to save Octavia, or Clarke, or both. But most of all she's furious with herself for failing to save him. For living a peaceful life on Skyring while the enemy were blowing him sky high. For falling in love with Hope, rather than clinging to her loyalty to Bellamy.

She can hear Gabriel shouting, but it's like she's under the lake on Skyring and his voice is muffled and far away. She knows what he's saying. He's telling her to stop killing the man, but she's not interested in hearing that. She sees it, now. Killing is all she was ever any good at. Her peaceful life since Bellamy was just a detour, and now he's gone, no doubt she will go back to her old ways.

It's when Hope shouts that she pauses.

"Echo, please!"

Just for a heartbeat – a mere half-second – her fist slows in the air.

Hope continues. "Please! We need him to find my mother. We need a hostage, remember? And he can tell us where she is. Please, Echo!"

The sound of her voice breaks through the fog of fury, somehow. Echo's not drowning in the lake any more. Rather, she is rising, swimming towards the light, breaking through the surface.

She cannot let Hope down, not on the same day that she has learnt that she failed Bellamy. She gathers the shreds of her tattered self-control and forces herself to think it through. Upsetting Hope would be bad – that would not be loyalty. And most of all, she knows that Hope is desperate to find her mother. She knows that Hope – the woman she _loves_ in a way she has never loved anyone else – will be happier, if she finds her mother.

She wants Hope to be happy.

That does it. She steps back from the battered white-suited body. She clamps her jaw shut, hears the echoes of her own scream die away.

And then she pastes her game face back on, and sheathes her knife, and gives a cold nod to the other members of her team, like a good Azgeda spy.

They ought to get moving. They ought to act quick, running to find Diyoza, getting out of here while they still can. But somehow, there is a heavy pause, as Gabriel takes control of the hostage and Hope closes the distance between herself and Echo.

They share their second close hug in ten minutes and two planets. Hope's hand comes up around her neck, forcing her to make eye contact.

Forcing her to accept what she's become – what she always was.

Only somehow, that's not how it turns out. "That's not you." Hope says, firm and clear and confident. "You hear me? That's not you. You hold it together and you do whatever it takes to get us out of here. _That's_ who you are. I'm so sorry about Bellamy, but you can't fall apart now and you know it. You finish the mission, and you get out of here, and then you mourn."

Echo nods, resolute. She can do that. That's what she did when she lost her father. That's what she did when Roan banished her. Loyalty and self-control – those are her greatest strengths.

She thinks that must be it. The hug is over. It's time to run. Octavia looks anxious to get going, Gabriel has the hostage's hands tied.

But Hope isn't done yet.

"I know he was important to you. But you still have a family, and we need you now."

That does it. That breaks her, but in a very different way. There is no screaming, now, no frenzied and senseless desire to lash out. As Echo keeps her face neutral, a couple of lonely tears track down her cheeks.

That makes her the worst possible Azgeda spy, she's pretty sure.

As she pulls Hope in for one last, frantic hug, she decides that's an identity she can learn to live with.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!


End file.
